“It’s the stupid bed. I haven’t been sleeping well.” He shot her a sympathetic look, and she sighed. “So what, once I’m all healed up, they’re going to throw me in jail or something?”
The man tapped the plastic bracelet strapped to her wrist with his pen. “Nah, you should be okay. Temporary insanity. You’re headed to the Behavioral Health Unit after this.”
Surprise was like a fist to her gut. “Yeah, no way. I need to get the hell out of here.”
He chuckled. “I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”
With a sinking heart, Katarina noticed the bright yellow color of her new bracelet, which matched the new socks on her feet. A string of curse words flooded her mouth, but she choked them back with a valiant effort.
Dammit.
That damn doctor must like punishing people who got the better of him, the big wimp. The psych ward, seriously? The place the staff referred to as Crazytown when they didn’t think the patients were listening.
Katarina was always listening, though.
She studied the man as he worked. “What’s your name? This is the first time I’ve seen you around.”
“Jasper.” He flipped his name tag around so she could read for herself.
Jasper A. Matthews, Behavioral Health CNA
“I’m the one prepping you to move to the behavioral health unit. A bed just opened up.”
“I swear, I’m not really crazy.” Even to her own ears, her voice sounded defensive, and Jasper’s lifted brow reinforced her suspicions. She rolled her eyes and groaned. “Okay, fine, you’ve probably heard that one before.”
“Three times today already, but who’s counting?” He winked at her. “If it helps at all, your stay in the unit will be as short as it needs to be.”
And who made those length-of-stay decisions? Some freaky old psychiatrist who worshipped Freud and wouldn’t release Katarina until she agreed that penis envy was the root cause of all her problems? Fine, whatever. Give her a script, and she’d recite whatever BS was on the page verbatim.
Anything to get the hell out of there and find her daughter.
“Do the beds on the psych floor move?”
Jasper’s laugh was deep enough to shake his entire body, and warm. A nice laugh. “No. Moving beds on the psych ward would cause more problems than they solved.”
“Thank god for small favors.”
He laughed again, and Katarina allowed the warmth to flow over her. The sensation faded all too quickly, though. Flirting with the cute CNA wouldn’t do a damn thing to save her baby girl. “Please. I don’t want to be transferred. I want to go look for my daughter.”
“Is your daughter Bethany? The girl in all those Amber Alerts lately?”
Katarina’s throat swelled up, and she nodded. “That’s her.”
Jasper stopped smiling, and compassion creased the skin around his eyes. He reached over the bed rail and patted her hand. “When you get up to the sixth floor, all you have to do is show the doctor that you’re mentally competent and no danger to yourself or others. Then they’ll let you go.”
For some reason, his small bit of kindness made the lump in her throat grow larger. “Thank you.”
“No worries, I’m here to help.” He rose from the rolling stool. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay? I need to check on that bed.”
Katarina’s gaze stayed on him as he left. Kind, cute, young. Jasper could prove to be useful in her escape plan.
Or he might get in the way.
She closed her eyes. Yes, he was nice, but if he tried to stop her from going after Bethany, she’d kill him. Just like she had Clayne.
Her stomach roiled at the memory. As long as she lived, Katarina would never forget the stark horror and disbelief in Clayne’s eyes the moment he’d realized she was going to kill him. Or the warmth of his blood when the liquid gushed over her hands. Or the blood that bubbled from his mouth right before he died.
Almost worse than that, though, was the smug little grin on Kingsley’s face as he’d sat back and watched the whole thing. Like he was a proud dad, basking in the glow of his child’s first win at a track meet.
Her stomach clenched down hard, and saliva flooded her mouth. She was still fighting off the last of the nausea when the door swung open again. “That was quick.”
She’d expected Jasper, but the tall man who’d entered her room wore a white lab coat instead of scrubs.
Katarina frowned at the newcomer. The tanned skin and brown eyes beneath square-shaped glasses looked familiar. Even the voice reminded her of Kingsley, though the doctor didn’t enunciate as clearly, almost like he spoke with marbles in his mouth or had a slight speech impediment.
But the jaw and mouth were all wrong. She relaxed, reminding herself of what happened earlier. Maybe she really was losing her mind if she kept finding Kingsley in every single male doctor’s face that entered the room.
The doctor straddled the stool and rolled closer to the bed. “On a scale of one to ten, what’s your pain level this afternoon?”
“Two.”
“Any problems urinating or defecating on your own?”
“No.”
The next few questions were more of the same, routine checkups on her recovery that she answered multiple times a day. Katarina could have answered them in her sleep by now.
“How does it feel to be in the hospital when your daughter is out there missing?”
Katarina’s inhalation hissed louder than the bed, but the doctor wasn’t even looking at her. Her pulse eased when she remembered the transfer. The psych ward, right. This was probably just a tiny taste of the kinds of intrusive questions she could expect up there. “Awful. Scary. Any chance you could decide to let me go now and schedule an outpatient appointment instead?”
“I’m afraid not.” The doctor skipped right ahead to the next questions. “How are you
